How was the flavor of your 2 year Parmesan? I imagine it must be lovely

Flavor was quite strong. I use mild lipase that one.I think it would have been better without any lipase because long aging time.But it is good for cooking anyway

Hande

I have a cheese that wasn't aged quite that long but it's flavor is very strong too. I can't get it off my hands after handling the cheese. Even soap and water doesn't work. But it has lovely flavor for grating over food. -Kathrin

Hmmm, I have a 2 year old Romano that I've not opened yet. I've been using a montasio for my grating cheese and it's great, so this one has just been getting older. It's a 10 litre make, with 1/4 tsp of calf lipase, so it will be interesting to see how strong this is when it finally gets cracked. An event which is not in the near future, and this may make it to age 3 or 4 before that happens.

- Jeff

Logged

The wise do not always start out on the right path, but they do know when to change course.

Wow Boof...sure glad I found this thread! I LOVE LOVE LOVE garlic...in most anything...and will make this cheese! I made a good Gouda (will post soon in separate thread) recently and in the next make will add GARLIC.

Cannot see from the photo whether you added 1 tsp or 1 Tbsp powdered garlic in this make. You are saying "granulated" garlic, but the bottle says garlic "powder"...both are offered on grocery shelves, but will go with the powdered according to your picture.

Now, what's your thought on using fresh garlic bulbs, crushed/diced? When I used fresh chopped (and then blanched) habanero & jalepeno peppers in a cheese, it was barely hot! I think the blanching killed the "hotness". Next time, I will blanch the whole fresh peppers and then chop and add to the curd. I've also read that you can add the blanching water to the whey early on to permeate the curd with spiciness. I'm guessing that with blanching the whole pepper, you'll not get much spice in the blanching water however. Anyway, that is another cheese.....

So back to the viability of adding fresh chopped garlic to Gouda (maybe in addition to the powdered for extra oomph)....what do you think?

So back to the viability of adding fresh chopped garlic to Gouda (maybe in addition to the powdered for extra oomph)....what do you think?

I'd like to do either a Gouda or Tomme (a semi-hard to hard cheese) with fresh garlic. I think a quick blanch of the cloves would reduce the incidence of baddies in the curd, then minced & crushed on a sanitized cutting board, and added to the curds just before moulding. That should work fine. I would be aiming for the smallest size pieces I could make. No big chunks of garlic.

The big question is how much to add to what volume milk? I used a tablespoon of the garlic powder in 3 gallons milk. The container states that 1/4 tsp = 1 clove garlic. Roughly extrapolated that means I added about 12 cloves of fresh garlic. But how big is a garlic clove? I've seen quite a difference in clove size. It's difficult to envision that tablespoon being the equivalent of 12 garlic cloves. Yes, I realize a lot is lost in dehydration, but still....

My next effort will use fresh garlic, weighed out to a certain number of grams. That should narrow this down a bit.

I always used about a tablespoon of fresh garlic per gallon of milk - more is for serious garlic fiends, and less is for people that just want a hint. Easy to measure that way, since I would just grab a bunch of heads of garlic, peel the cloves, and whizz 'em up in the food processor. Freeze them in 1 tbsp lumps, and pull out as needed for cheese (or anything else, for that matter). No fuss, no muss - except the eye-burning if the garlic variety was a strong one .

That will probably get you to a good happy medium and you can adjust on your futures. At one time I'd gone up almost 6 heaped tablespoons in a 3-gallon make, and that was too much even for me, by the time the cheese finished aging - you couldn't taste anything BUT the garlic.

(I should note that these were all cheddars - so I was taking the 8-12 month aging time into consideration, having heard that garlic - fresh or otherwise - can get bitter over time. So maybe you could pile on more that a tbsp per gallon after all, in a short aging cheese. Although if you added roughly 12 cloves of garlic, that seems to be less to me than my 1 tbsp smooshed. Ah, 'tis a puzzlement.)

Boofer, the garlic/bitterness was a few anecdotes from somewhere early on in the forum - someone mentioned it and a few others chimes in. I don't remember the participants or anything, I just hooked onto the comment early in my cheesing adventures because my first intent was making garlic herb cheddars. Sorry I can't be more specific.

so I was taking the 8-12 month aging time into consideration, having heard that garlic - fresh or otherwise - can get bitter over time.

True? Is this documented anywhere or realized in the real world?

Yes, apparently it is true. Just googling bitter garlic brought a number of articles. I have extracted and attached one here.

-Boofer-

I used to buy a two year old Gouda with Garlic from the Cariboo Cheese Company here in BC.

There was no bitterness at all , it was one of the best cheeses I have ever had , they used fresh Garlic.

A lot of TV chefs say that garlic gets bitter when browned as well , we roast garlic til it is golden brown all the time , and I don't notice any bitterness at all , so it may be in the preparation , or in the consumers mind , or the type of garlic , or just an old wives tale , who knows ?

I guess it's a matter of taste.

Cheers , Jim.

Logged

No..........I'm not a professional CheeseMaker , but I play one on TV.

I've had garlic go bitter when sautéed to just befor burned. Seems to be a fine line between browned and bitter. Roasting is a whole different story. I've noticed bitterness in fresh garlic that has been around long enough to begin to sprout.

My guess is fresh garlic in cheese doesn't get bitter because ther isn't much oxygen available.